Feature
After the Wave
Robert Duffin shares his vast knowledge of EIFF's retrospective strand with a history and critique.
It would be impossible to walk the streets of Edinburgh in the early days of June and not notice that the Edinburgh International Film Festival is about to take over the city. Bus shelters, taxis, flyers, and even the Filmhouse and Cineworld venues are transformed into advertising canvases to let you know that an important cultural event is about to take place. Yet, eagle eyed patrons of Lothian Road may have been surprised to notice a smaller, grassroots campaign that was taking place at the same time. Crudely photocopied, hand written posters were stuck with tape to lamp posts, walls and even the pavement promoting this year’s ‘After the Wave: Lost and Forgotten British Cinema 1967-79’ retrospective programme. This low-fi method of promotion gave the event a hint of the underground, perhaps an intentional attempt to invoke memories of the retrospective programmes of the 1970s, which remain to this day the intellectual legacy of the institution.
In 1969 the EIFF challenged the perception of what could be achieved with a film festival retrospective. In what is now considered a landmark year, Murray Grigor became the Artistic Director and he hired two of the festivals fiercest critics, Lynda Myles and David Will, as the lead programmers. The retrospectives which were once benign celebrations of established filmmakers were now programmed to challenge audience perceptions and critically re-evaluate the body of work of the selected director; highlighted auteurs who had been, in the eyes of the programmers unjustifiably neglected. In 1969 the EIFF honoured Roger Corman, then a maverick filmmaker who specialised in low budget schlock features. This selection kicked off a period during which the festival would become renowned for its provocations and interventions into film culture with events such as Brecht and Cinema (1975) and Psychoanalysis and Cinema (1976), and also publications about the retrospective subjects, which were in most cases the first academic work compiled on the filmmakers.
The impact of said intellectual legacy has weighed heavily on the EIFF ever since, with many commentators noting that the retrospectives has never reached the cerebral highs of this period. Of course the EIFF retrospective programmes have experienced various identity changes since the early 1970s. In the 1980s, the programmers moved away from auteur based retrospectives, with one noticeable trend being the promotion of national cinemas such as New Oriental Cinema (1985) and Soviet Cinema (1987). The 90s/00s were more difficult to define, with a range moving from celebrations of films released in 1947 (1996), to mark the 50th anniversary of the EIFF, to embracing filmmaker Alan Clarke (1998) whose primary achievements were in television. While the EIFF retrospectives frequently showcase interesting strands, the questions that frequently crops up is “why?”
This year's retrospective at the EIFF screened ‘neglected’ British films from the Sixties and Seventies. EIFF Senior Programmer Niall Greig Fulton said, in a quote from the EIFF programme notes, that people should not expect "orthodox choices" from the era. The strand will include titles that have all but been forgotten, or as the EIFF perhaps would have phrased it in the 70s, unjustifiably neglected. "There are titles included that haven’t been seen on any format for years, outstanding British cinema that should be celebrated, but instead has been relegated to the odd television screening, or the confines of an old VHS tape. It’s going to be a unique opportunity to see these lost classics, which you might otherwise not see at all, back on the big screen where they belong.”
The film themselves were a true delight. The Jokers (1966, Michael Winner) was a romp around 60s swinging London with Oliver Reed’s charming menace on fine form that proved Michael Winner was a lot more than a schlock filmmaker turned insurance salesman on television. Screening The Rise and Rise of Michael Rimmer (1970, Kevin Billington) did beg the question why it is not held up as a classic piece of British political satire, and the prescient Privilege (1967, Peter Watkins) also offered a startling commentary for our current celebrity obsessed times. Then there was The Final Programme (1973, Robert Fuest), a kitsch sci-fi gem with John Finch strutting around in Cuban heels and a crushed velvet suit, an iconic performance that in an alternate world would offer as many imitators come Halloween as Malcolm McDowell’s Alex.
The retrospective screenings were seemingly a success with audiences, with all the films filling up the Filmhouse screen they were shown in. However, the ‘After the Wave Discussion’ event allowed several festival consumers to once again draw the comparison to the retrospectives of the 1970s. Intellectual bankruptcy was the buzzword amongst some of the patrons of the event; they were seemingly frustrated by the inability of the EIFF programmers to defend their decision to screen these films. For some, the fact that these films were not available on DVD was simply not enough to justify an attempt to rectify the canon of British cinema in the 1970s. Even Stephen Frears, participant in the discussion whose film Gumshoe (1971) was screening as part of the retrospective, offered the glib remark “maybe they are not remembered because they are simply not any good.”
The success of the retrospectives in the 1970s must haunt those who attempt to programme something groundbreaking in the modern era. The volume of film titles, both on DVD and by download, has problematised the relevance and cultural impact of the retrospectives staged by the EIFF. It is now very difficult to discover or indeed rediscover a filmmaker, world cinema strand or movement as was done in the past. Also, the assertion by the festival that these films were unavailable is not entirely correct. The Rise and Rise of Michael Rimmer is readily available to purchase on DVD and Privilege was only recently released by the BFI on their Flipside label with a glorious new high definition transfer on BluRay. Stephen Frears would again burst the bubble of the retrospective, noting that his film Gumshoe was screened on television only a few weeks before the EIFF began. Financial considerations are also cited as the reason for the demise of the printed publications to accompany the retrospective, perhaps correctly pondering whether there is a market beyond staunch academics for such material.
It is perhaps considered by some naive to wish for a return to the retrospective programming content of the 1970s given the number of changes to the film festival landscape all over the world in the last forty years; those conditions cannot be recreated. However, removed from the weight of the legacy, the purpose of this retrospective was an attempt to redress the canon and with this goal in mind perhaps screening the films is simply not enough. After the Corman films had been screened at Edinburgh in 1969, it was the literature surrounding them that lived on and cemented his legacy, not the films, since home video was fifteen years away. With After the Wave being, in the majority of cases, the last foreseeable chance to see these films, there is no ripple effect in the canon of British cinema without EIFF supported documentation. Perhaps a more bombastic and aggressive effort to promote the significance of these films was required. You can’t leave footprints that last if you’re always walking on tiptoe.
Robert Duffin
